Again, after having given an attractive description of the first impression made upon the stranger by Liberia and its inhabitants, our author proceeds to say: Now, the spectacle which offers itself to the eyes of the visitor is less beautiful. It is the spec tacle of a nation in decadence. And this fact of a nation not yet a century old which, starting from nothing, raised itself in twenty years to its apogee, and has commenced, at the end of barely sixty years, to fall into decay, this fact, I say, deserves that one should pause, for at first sight it is not natural. And it can only find its explanation in the theory which I attempt to develop here, to wit: That the negroes in general, and the Liberians in particular, are emi nently susceptible of perfectionment and progress, but that this perfectionment and this progress are destined to a sudden check, and even to a prompt decadence, if one has sought to orient them in the direction of our European civilization.
